Keeping in mind that I am 18 and live in Maricopa County, Arizona…
What sort of rights do I have as a high school student? Recently, a teacher confiscated an acquaintance’s hat as it apparently was against school rules. Can the teacher simply keep this hat indefinitely? Does he have to give it back? Is there any way to protect myself against this sort of “theft”? For example, could a teacher simply think something like, “Whoa… that’s a nice deck of cards there,” walk over, and say, “I’m sorry, those cards are not school appropriate. Hand them over.” Something seems just intrinsically wrong here.
In addition, are there any common student rights of which I should be aware? Anything that might be infringed upon whether by accident or intent? Thanks in advance.
I went to school in Fairfax County, VA, so I’m sure your environment is at least a little different.
But I asked similar questions on many occaisions, and the short answer is: No. They can pretty much do whatever they darn well feel like and you can’t do anything about it. The only real shot you have is to get parents complaining about it and they might make an exception.
I had a number of hats stolen from me in this way. My first high school implemented a “No Hats” rule because “It might start a gang war”… this is in a suburban white-bread high school in northern VA, the closest thing to “gangs” that we had were football players who would occaisionally get drunk and spray paint things. I got hats taken away because I had them IN MY BACKPACK… which they searched unlawfully looking for other things (which they didn’t find), but they decided to take the hat for good measure.
Sorry about the situation, it sucks. But the trend these days seems to be to strip away the rights of the people who actually go to the schools in order to “protect” them.